Chagos News The Periodical Newsletter of the Chagos Conservation Trust and Chagos Conservation Trust US No 57 December 2020 ISSN 2046 7222 © Jon Slayer Contents © Jon Slayer Editorial Dr Natasha Gibson, CCT Chair By now, I’m sure all of you have watched oceans and coasts means reducing the Editorial P3 David Attenborough’s moving testament pressure on those ecosystems so they can to environmental change and habitat recover, both naturally and by re-seeding or destruction in his reflections on a Life transplanting key species”. on our Planet. “Scientist David”, as my The Story of the Lost Brain Coral P4 young son calls him, not only documented The science of biodiversity monitoring has the natural world in stunning detail but recently stepped up a gear with a new implored all of us to care for it through monitoring tool: environmental DNA analysis. News in brief P10 small actions and large efforts. This is described in more detail on P16 by the And so, in the spirit of this citizen science, I’ve scientists of NatureMetrics, who we hope to stepped up to the challenge of chairing CCT in partner with on the Chagos Archipelago, but in A Decade in Review P12 this exciting time as it implements the Healthy basic terms the tool picks up traces of animals Islands, Health Reefs programme. and plants from water, sediment, or soil. I hope that my extensive experience in This vastly increases the ability to determine Next Steps Towards a Rewilded P14 formulating and leading rehabilitation, what species are present in an area, to detect biodiversity, clean energy, and sustainability rare and elusive organisms, and is more cost Archipelago programmes will benefit the Trust and effective as it relies on sample collection its ambitions. rather than direct observation of numbers. Next year will be an important milestone year These samples can be collected by anyone New Tools for Monitoring Biodiversity P16 for CCT with the launch of Healthy Islands, as it is a straightforward process, which is Healthy Reefs. a bonus for CCT as we can ask any visiting scientific expedition, or even personnel based This is an ambitious 10-year programme to on Diego Garcia, to take these on our behalf. rewild the Chagos Archipelago, and is our contribution to the UN Decade on Ecosystem Thank you again for your continued interest Restoration that aims to prevent, halt and and support, especially through a difficult reverse the degradation of ecosystems on year due to the global pandemic, and all of every continent and in every ocean. us here at CCT look forward to updating you next year on the progress of Healthy Islands, Our programme aims to eradicate invasive Healthy Reefs. species and allow the reintroduction of seabirds and native vegetation, and so supports the UN’s statement that “restoring Wishing you a safe and happy 2021! © Jon Slayer Cover image: Chagos brain coral Ctenella chagius © Amelia Rose/University of Oxford 2 3 Professor Charles Sheppard, a wonderful On the third day’s sail, the vessel arrived at Ile character known to many at CCT and in my Diamant to anchor for a day or two, whilst we romantic mind, a passionate marine scientist used the inflatable boats to survey the reefs straight out of the rumpled pages of my copy of the islands nearby. At the seaward sites of of The Lost World. Ile de la Passe and Ile Diamant, I continued to search for and sample the abundant Acropora As the warm winds tugged at our hair (well, and Porites species which form the focus of certainly mine, at any rate), Charles was our research into reef health at Oxford, whilst regaling me with glorious and nostalgic always keeping half an eye out for Ctenella. chronicles of his time diving in the Chagos Archipelago in the 1970s, and the tragic The occasional surge of hope was more demise of one of its most iconic denizens, often than not a false one, colonies of similar- the Chagos brain coral (Ctenella chagius), looking brain corals Goniastrea and Leptoria Figure 1 © Amelia Rose/University of Oxford Figure 1 © an endemic to this region of the world. easy to mistake at depth. That afternoon, buffeted by a slight swell, we skipped As he eloquently described in his article across the waves to anchor just off Moresby for CCT several years ago (‘The Chagos Island, named after the eighteenth century brain coral Ctenella chagius: falling into cartographer who surveyed these islands. the red’; Chagos News, No. 52 July 2018), The Story of the this beautiful hemispherical coral (Figure 1) The site comprised a wide terrace at six was once one of the most common in the metres depth, sloping down to 11 metres and Lost Brain Coral archipelago. then dropping off–it was a wonderful place, Dr Bryan Wilson, Department of Zoology, and with hindsight, one of my favourite on However, recent warming events in the Indian that expedition, with high coral cover and University of Oxford Ocean have disproportionately decimated diversity. And yet also a challenging dive, its once abundant populations, such that the subsurface current increasing steadily on a previous expedition to BIOT in 2017, throughout the hour underwater. Employing As a child, I was entranced by the world and conserve the species for posterity not a single live colony was found and there my usual survey tactic of heading upcurrent to fantastical fictional tales of Conan Doyle’s and eventual reintroduction back into its were fears that it had become extinct. Upon begin and then drift-diving back to the anchor, The Lost World, and later, by its real-life jungle home. their return to the archipelago the following my research associate (Amelia Rose) and I (and admittedly slightly less exotic but year however, a small number of diminished finned across the reef looking for corals to nonetheless enthralling) counterpart, the Despite it being the 1980s, those dreams extant living fragments were discovered in the sample and tag. telling of Marjorie Courtney-Latimer’s always seemed to be illuminated by Victorian northern atolls of Salomon and Peros Banhos, rediscovery of the long thought extinct flash photography, possibly in tribute to the and with it, the chance that the species was And within the first ten minutes, we spotted coelacanth, amongst a rotting waste tall tales of that time, who knows. Of course, not lost to science after all. our first glimpse of the enigmatic Ctenella, pile of landed fish on the docks of East that was some decades ago and whilst my albeit a very pale and sorry-looking fragment, After hearing this and forever being the London, South Africa in 1938. dreams have become slightly jaded by the a small surviving part of what was once a realisation of the hundreds of extinctions that optimist, I had on something of a whim much larger colony (Figure 2) and likely one In my frequent young flights of fancy, I often have happened since my childhood, I have included a permit for Ctenella when applying of the specimens that Charles had spotted the imagined myself some great explorer of old, always held on to that same bookwormish to the BIOT Administration to sample for a year before. Six more similarly sorry-looking pushing through dense undergrowth into a fantasy. And then, several decades later, I number of other more commonly-occurring findings followed and I couldn’t help but be jungle clearing, only to see the merest flash finally took that flight of fancy... coral species, on the off chance (nay, the slightly underwhelmed–and terribly sad. of something disappearing into the thicket–the inspired hope!) that I would stumble upon one striped tail of a thylacine, the flecked breast Early in April 2019 and having only just joined on my upcoming dives. The photos Charles had showed me were of a Mauritius kestrel, or possibly even the the Bertarelli Program in Marine Science of pink-hued and beachball-sized giant As luck would have it, our expedition began comedically portly rump of a dodo. (BPMS) several months before, I found underwater brains and these fragments myself on their annual expedition to the in the south-west corner of Peros Banhos were mere shadows of those. Still, where I And then the furious chase that followed British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT), aboard Atoll, surveying Ile du Coin, and as we sailed could, I tagged the colonies and gently took (possibly more of a clumsy lunge in the case the Patrol Vessel Grampian Frontier, forcing steadily northwards and clockwise in the thumbnail-sized tissue samples for which of the dodo). The capture! And the return its way through an unseasonable Indian coming days, my anticipation to dive the I’d so optimistically applied for a permit home a hero, to share my discovery with the Ocean surge and chatting up on deck with northern islands of the atoll grew. those months before, in the hope that some 4 5 contribution to the paucity of knowledge fortune, I was lucky enough to be awarded concerning this little coral could be made. a global research award to do just that by QIAGEN, one of the world’s leading The six or seven weeks that followed our biotechnology companies. And as I write this, return to the UK were nervous ones–far too I have received the first results back, and am many times in my career have samples gone currently delving into the first ever genome missing or spoiled during their inexorable data for this coral, hoping that the secrets of progress home around the globe–the its enigmatic and tenuous existence might sensation heightened by the thoughts that finally be revealed.